Heading towards the end of 2021

Only 13 more days before we reach the last day of 2021,
 I'm hoping that 2022 will be an improvement!

There's nothing exciting to show in this post, frankly I haven't had the energy
nor enthusiasm nor health  this year to enjoy much time in my little sewing haven but I'm hoping
that will change in 2022. My batteries desperately need re-charging, my little studio
needs an overhaul and I'm going to work
on both over the next two weeks.

Two areas I need to address:

the contents above  from one of my four scrap bins.
For many years I just tossed pieces large and small into these bins, no sorting whatsoever,
no neat storage containers for each colour and now I am paying the price!

The mound of fabric you see above actually measures 35" in width,
29" in depth and 18" high - that's a lot of sorting and as I say, I do have four bins of the same size, at least I thought
I had four but it seems I do have two more in a spare closet, I had forgotten about them but DH
found them!

You can see I also have a good collection of strips and strings,
one container of three shown here, 18" x 12" and these also need sorting.
I see a lot of time spent with an iron in my hand remedying the situation!

Before making a start on these chores in the last few days of 2021 my time will be spent, I hope,
relaxing under the maple tree in the garden with a stack of books,  sharing
 lunch on Christmas Day with our family at our eldest son's home, very
handy because  he lives on the opposite side of the road just five houses along.
We are still wearing masks and living lives under what is known as the
Traffic Light System, hopefully it will work with managing Covid cases. 

One good thing right now is that the garden is blooming - good for the soul -
I was able to collect a few flowers to place on Mum's resting place remembering her
birthday on the 9th.

Alstromeria, hydrangeas, lavender, dahlias and one of my much loved
roses Buff Beauty. The yellow and pink dahlia is one from my new collection,
named Pacific Ocean.

Reverse  I placed a sprig of Philadelphus, this has a glorious perfume.

Well, I think I'm going to finish up now and leave you with a photo of
my Pacific Ocean dahlia and wish you all lots of love and happiness
for Christmas and see you in New Year 2022.

Love and God Bless

Maureen

                                            

A little more progress - a new quilt

My last post I was debating which binding to use on
Dolly Mixtures I had a photo of two binding samples against the quilt and asked
for thoughts on which to go with.
Julie aka quiltdivajulie
said in her comment that she was torn between the two shown and the backing
fabric I intending using could influence her choice - good point made.

I've decided on the Green Guinea Flower to go with the bright backing,
this fabric has been sitting on the shelf for a number of years, the many coloured parrots
nicely fit with the fabrics in Dolly Mixtures.

It's been a slow two weeks involving a visit to the hospital
for a consult with a Neurologist, I won't bore you with the medical details
apart from saying that there may be mistakes in words and phrasing
in my posts, these and other symptoms are felt to be consistent
 with a functional neurological disorder.
I know also that my comments on blog posts from others have perhaps been brief
so please forgive me if I do slip up here and there.

A bright spot on the day of the visit was stopping off at our local beach at
Cockle Bay on the drive home

the tide was  out and the sand positively glowed!

Quilting - a quilt for our eldest grandson - 21yrs in January - needed to be
dealt to reasonable quickly, having enjoyed working with the simple squares
of Dolly Mixtures I decided to go with the same format but larger squares,
progress so far

the very dark one on the left will probably be moved, it's looking a little overpowering
just there I think and you can see I'm going with the same format used with DM to create a border
of just  one fabric - KF  Baba Ganoush - another favourite fabric. Fussy cutting is
necessary to create the effect here, I can see there are two squares in the top row
which I'll change out tomorrow. The squares will finish at 4"

Luckily grandson loves colour and will not be averse to having a few
flowery squares in the quilt but I am trying to keep those to a minimum, a 
little tricky when you're a collector of KF Collective fabrics!!

Summer officially began yesterday here in New Zealand, flowers are blooming
and my hydrangeas have excelled themselves, here are two below

the pink one truly is a rich pink.

See you soon, until then happy quilting.

Maureen

Progress with Dolly Mixtures, Spring blooms and a good book!

 I don't have much to write about in this post I'm afraid, update on
Dolly Mixtures and flower photos!!

Let's start off with beautiful magenta pink roses

the name escapes me at the moment but the bush is blooming
prolifically and scents the air wonderfully!

My last post had Dolly Mixtures as a top but minus the border,
that's now been remedied, I've carried on with a 2 and 1/2" finished
border of Guinea Flower - a favourite pattern of mine in all colours of the
range.

Photographed in the garden below on a sunny morning yesterday

and here on the design wall whilst I played with choices for binding.

 

I'm really happy with the extra width of Guinea Flower, I feel it holds
the multitude of colours in this quilt together nicely.

Binding ideas, just playing with scrappy pieces, on the left
is green GF  - I placed this so that I  could see how that shade of green
fitted in given all the colour in the top,  I do like the
medium depth in this one. In contrast the strippy scrap on the right is
really very dark, in fact I think it's too dark, it's one of the new PJ fabrics below.

I could try a few more tomorrow but looking at the LH side again

I think the green version of GF could work - any thoughts here?

 Emptying out my three very large scrap bins has been keeping me occupied and the

the volume is overwhelming!! Starting to sort into large/small pieces and

iron. I've been guilty of just tossing pieces gaily into these bins when I should

have put them away after completing a project.

There are lots of nice surprises for me in the sorting process, a piece of

one of my favourites from years ago, KFC of course. Pity it's only
a 10" square but I shall find a nice home for it!

Here are a couple of flower

photos for you all.

Alstromeria with a David Austin rose - Tranquility - and we all need a little

of that right now.

Outside the living room window

the first epiphyllum bloom of the year.

The next few days will be spent making a decision/decisions  on which project/projects to

make next on my list, my too long a list, which needs culling and to make a start

on reading a new book bought this morning.

Lynda is a well known gardening celebrity in NZ and lives with her family

on a farm -  Foggydale Farm - with a magnificent garden  in the

Hunua Ranges here in Auckland.

Perhaps the scrap sorting and project list could wait!!!

Maureen

Dolly Mixtures all ready for stitching

 I decided I'd played around enough with placing the squares, now
all nicely fastened in rows and ready to go

and here's my final layout below, perhaps I could have done a little more
tweaking but I wanted to move on

a little shadow on the bottom left, need to photograph
at a better time,  you can see the squares are
quite roughly in place, luckily none of them floated to the ground as
I removed the rows.
There will be a 2 and 1/2" border of the Guinea Flower fabric which
holds the centre in very nicely then I'll go with a dark binding.
Almost all the fabrics used are from my scrap stash apart from
two of the latest KF range.

Isn't it amazing what we find as we hunt through our scraps,
one of the fabrics in the quilt I must have had for a great many years
and was surprised to unearth it amongst the others.

I have used all of it here, look closely at the second row down to find a Plus with a pink
tentacle looking pattern, there are three more and it's got to be a KF and how I wish
that all those years ago I had thought to buy more yardage!

More KF fabrics arrived the other day, a few are below - in no particular order!

I'm counting these as a birthday gift to myself - 75 yrs  last week!!

Better get sewing my way through my fabrics!!

Hokusai's Mums

Hokusai's Mums

My Favourite - Van Gogh

Climbing Geranium and Flower Net

Dorothy - Red

Some time will now have to spent folding and putting in the appropriate place,

I really did buy a lot this time, now NO more fabrics, at least not until
next year when the new range is released.

Spring has arrived  here in New Zealand - the greenery is a delight to see

the Japanese Maple in the back garden is looking amazing and I always love

to see the tiny red 'helicopters' peeping out.

An early misty morning walk last week was a treat

and a bright show of pelargoniums - forgotten the name of the

other flower

 Not much here relating to quilting I'm afraid but I do have plans for next week!

Maureen

Four weeks later......

 Can't believe it's been four weeks since I last wrote a post!
I'd like to say a huge thank you for all your good wishes following my last post,
they really lifted my spirits.

Not much achieved lately but I received back the quilt, beautifully quilted, for my
eldest son Matt. It was too large to get a full shot so here is the centre showing off
the quilting, a photo showing the colours of the various strips and
also one of the fabric used for the backing.

Quilted by 
Leeanne at QuiltMeKiwi
with Celtic Wave design
using wool/polyester batting

Size: 78" by 84"

I was contemplating starting the hand quilting on
Liquorice Allsorts this week, but guess what arrived,

yes, another squirrel.
I had on my project list for next year a Plus quilt but plans changed thanks to my visitor
and I began cutting at once.
I enjoyed making my last quilt,
Liquorice Allsorts so much, read the blog posts

HERE
and
HERE

for the back story,
that I decided to base this new quilt on another of my well remembered
sweet treats from childhood.

The beginnings of Dolly Mixtures below

and I'm beginning from the outside and working in!

The strips are cut at 3".

Hopefully more progress will be made over the next few days

before I write another blog post.

Must finish up with something from the garden

how I wish you could breathe in the scent of this beautiful Viburnum.

Until next time, Happy Quilting!

Maureen

Difficult times

 Just a short post today, reasons at the end of the post.

I had decided I really wanted to make a 16 patch quilt, this had always
been on my wish list. Warm colours was my first choice but then I also began a cool colour
one as well. 
Just after my last post I was able to sew up a few blocks for the two proposed quilts,
here they are along with colour combinations auditioned on the wall., I then came to a to stop.

Cool colours

Warm colours

There are of  course lot more fabrics to add to the ones already here. 

Inspiration for my decision to work on these came from two areas,
one was the quilt below

Red Sea Sunset
made in 2014 and still not quilted

and a sunset from a few weeks ago

I had a visit to my doctor Friday last week with disturbing symptoms over a few
weeks which I ignored until my limbs were unable to function as they should,
especially my legs but my hand and arms are also a problem, they will be shaking like mad
by the time I have written this.

I have an urgent brain CT scan on Wednesday morning coming and then an urgent
appointment with a neurologist. He want so rule out anything in my brain before
going down the path of the possibility of Parkinsons. My primary care doctor had this in 
mind after carrying out a thorough neurological assessment. I have no balance and no co-ordination
in my legs, plus tremors and more. Concentration and diffictuly findint
the words I want to say.
I may not be able to leave comments on your posts at the moment but I do hope
to catch jup with reading them.

As soon as I am able I will post, meanwhile I was able to get able to get into the
garden to look at my flowers and take a few photographs, this cheered me up immensely.

Do take good care of yourselves and enjoy your quilting.

My best wishes to you all.

Maureen

 

Alert Level 4 Lockdown Day 15 and quilting non existent!!

Well I thought I would be galloping away on my sewing machine
during our two (now to be 4) weeks of lockdown, but not so!

Since my last post I just haven't been able to move forward at all,
a list of proposed projects still pinned on the design wall
which is currently blank. Mind buzzing with hundreds of ideas for future
quilts.

So, this post is an amalgam of bits and pieces
and to start with we have the latest Kaffe Fassett book, beautifully photographed as always,

however some of the quilts shown seem to be similar to ones in his earlier

books but using the latest of the KFC fabric range, which I have to say are as stunningly colourful
as always - I shall definitely be ordering a few for my stash.

Two books I particularly like from the early days are the ones below and
there are a few quilts which are interesting me greatly.

I decided to begin hand quilting Liquorice Allsorts whilst
waiting for inspiration to strike, I had in my box of Perle cottons a variegated

one which works beautifully on the Orchid centre squares,

the background I used for photographing is a little dark unfortunately
but the colours are quite luscious in 'real life'. I hit a slight snag
here with the needle size, the point was nice and sharp, needle just the right length
but the eye was too small for the cotton to pass through, if any of you have
used Perle cotton before I would love to know the type and size of needle used.

I have been spending time organising yet again my fabric storage, cubes were bought 

just before we changed alert levels and I'm using these for storing my

half yard KFC fabrics. Still need to go through the greys, whites and neutrals and
I just found a bin with more stash which I had forgotten about!

Sadly the light is not good again.

Other minutiae to show you is my favourite mask, we mask up when
leaving the house or entering essential business premises of which
there are only a handful including supermarkets, medical premises and the like.

I've actually been playing with fabric, cutting up three different colourways
of Sunburst fabric, there are three  quilts I've spotted using this fabric so I'll give some thought
to which colourway to go with and then  I need to cut them into individual
squares.

Last up a new fabric from 
Kathy Doughty -
click on her name the link will take you to her
store Material Obsession.
Aren't these budgies so cute!

Well that's all from me, perhaps inspiration will strike later today and
I should have something more to post about by the end of the week.

My thoughts right now are with everyone having been through the terror of Hurricane Ida,
the scenes were horrific.

Maureen